Reflections in a Red Mirror
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Because he's been covered in blood so long, he barely notices it now. - Kahara Shou (Digimon Next)
**A/N:** Challenges

Prompt in Steps Challenge, 4.07 – bloodshed  
Diversity Writing Challenge, c18 - write about losing something  
The Driven by Tears Boot Camp, #018 – drunk  
Becoming the Tamer King, Sheer Valley task  
The Valentines to White's Day Advent (2015), day 2 - amaryllis (splendid beauty): write an abstract piece of prose

* * *

 **Reflections in a Red Mirror**

.

He'd gotten used to being drenched in blood.

He wouldn't say he revelled in it. He probably never would. It was a necessity and nothing else: the price he'd accepted to pay when he chose to pursue this path and there was no turning back now.

Perhaps there had never been a turning point to begin with. The world where time could never be rewound. The world were the path he'd already walked upon fell away and there was only a straight road ahead: no choice, only one direction and the only way the path back would not be there was for it to be destroyed and swallowed up in a black so deep, he could not even look back at it. And that was fine. He did not need to look back of the reservoir of blood filling up behind him: a drop, a puddle, an entire river flowing into the ocean he slowly built.

It was behind him anyway. Not an ocean he could fall into and drown, but instead swallowed into the gloom of non-existence, save the echo in his heart.

.

He'd gotten used to the lack of phone calls. It was his fault anyway. There was only one person in the world who would call him so insistently and he sometimes wondered what Tsurugi was doing now. But Tsurugi was in the ocean, drowning in the clot-filled blood, becoming a black clump like those other black clumps that eventually crumbled into sand and the ocean floor.

He wondered how that ocean personified itself. He wondered if Tsurugi would crawl out one day as well, covered in blood like he. But it wouldn't be the same because he had one missing and one dead and he chased the missing one because she was all that was left. But someone like Tsurugi – why would the sun care if one of the tiny stars in the sky went out? There were innumerable more to count. But for the cloudy night sky who sometimes only had that one star to see, it mattered. It mattered very much.

It was Tsurugi's price for having forgotten Norun.

It was Tsurugi's price for being too bright.

.

He wasn't supposed to have a target painted on his partner's back. That wasn't fair. He just wanted to be friends with them.

It was impossible to be friends with a digimon like that and not fight with them. Because Peckmon was special. A star that was like a wishing star, that people sought. They shouldn't, because Peckmon had chosen his friend, his partner – but they sought anyway. They fought and made them stronger and that was all well and good except not all of them could accept defeat with grace.

And they crushed that special friend and partner of his like he was just an ant underfoot, and that target on the back would not act as a shield or magic to put him back together again.

And Norun had just gone missing days before.

One missing. And now one dead as well.

The vat of blood that caught him in its vortex and dragged him under.

.

The mask floated to him, like driftwood he could cling to and he clung to it. Clung to it because he would not drown, did not want to drown. And in the sea of red he floated, until it lifted him up on a wave of his own creation and dropped him on the road again. The road where he took a step, and then the ocean fell away into the past he could never touch again –

And he was standing on the present, where the blood wasn't on his lap and feet from holding death in his arms, but on his hands and face from pulling the blade free from that gushing wound. A special digimon just like the special digimon he'd gained and lost, the wishing star that hadn't let him fulfil the promise he'd made to Norun but instead had led to despair.

But this, this was something else. The special digimon had spirits and he could restore this one. Take it, make his own again. Useless to the fools who thought they could win a wish that hadn't come to him. But he could do it. Cut off the limbs he needed and build his bird again.

So he did it. A scarecrow bird, perhaps. But that was fine because he had the blade, and the mask to protect his face from future splotches and he needed Peckmon. He needed Peckmon to paint this path red and steer it on to Norun.

.

Why should a path of blood lead to Norun, he wondered, sometimes.

Because the promise was already broken, of course. There was no white thorny branch to take him instead, climbing up one barb at a time so they didn't prick his fingers and send him into eternal slumber but instead served as the rungs to the ladder of success and their forever. But that branch was gone, and all that was left was the bleeding rose petals, and maybe if he watered them enough, for long enough, a new bud would bloom underneath.

Or maybe that was just his rationale for a twisting labyrinth he could no longer escape from…if escape had ever been possible.

.

Poor Tsurugi paid the price for owning another special digimon. If those foolish boys hadn't stolen his wish away from him, it might never have happened. He may have gone on ignoring the phone calls and Tsurugi might have given up on his own. It was easy enough to pretend he _had_ given up on his own…except that wasn't the case.

The phone was silent these days because GeoGreymon was dead.

He wondered if the next special digimon to die would be by Tsurugi's hands…or if he was the only one to realise what those special digimon shared, those forbidden digimon – what the other, normal digimon, didn't have. Life, real life that couldn't be replaced but there was something else as well and that something else _could_ be replaced and he was replacing it: replacing it again and again to keep that shadow, that scarecrow Peckmon alive so he could grab another part of the soul and add it in but of course, they would never be enough. They'd run out, and he could only hope he reached Norun before that happened because that would be the only way he'd ever be able to let go, the only way the path could go to a place where there was no red light to illuminate the path of blood behind him…

Or maybe he'd killed that chance along with the stars in the sky.

(And yes, dear Shou, you have).


End file.
